


sorry about the blood in your mouth

by deluxemycroft



Series: couldn't get the boy to kill me [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (it doesn't come up but i'm saying it now), (maybe but i'm warning for it anyway), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Assassination Attempt(s), Bisexual Clint Barton, Brainwashing, Deaf Clint Barton, Gay Bucky Barnes, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Bucky Barnes, Hydra Clint Barton, Kidnapping, M/M, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Restraints, SHIELD, Secret Missions, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Torture, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 21:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: Clint Barton, HYDRA operative.If it is for his soulmate, he will do whatever they ask. Even kill Captain America.





	sorry about the blood in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't been able to stop thinking about hydra clint ever since i wrote 'but first they must catch you'. hopefully this scratched that itch lol. there's no real warnings for this fic that i didn't cover in the tags. 
> 
> hope you enjoy!

The day Clint meets his soulmate, he’s kidnapped and blindfolded and his hearing aids taken out and he’s dragged before him snarling and spitting and out of his mind panicked and furious. He can’t fucking _hear_ anything and he lunges for the first guard, teeth bared, the second they pull the sack off his head. They catch him, of course, and don’t trust him enough to untie his hands, but they pin him down and shove his aids back in. 

He’s always hated the way sound rushes in. 

They drag him off the floor and two of the beefy guards stand on either side of him. Clint snarls and looks around the room. 

He glances over the man restrained to the chair, looks over the scientists, and then his eyes are drawn immediately back to the man. 

_Oh,_ his heart says, _it’s you._

He has a metal arm and long brown hair and Clint sags in the grasp of the guards as he looks at him. 

“Clint Barton,” one of the scientists says, reading off a clipboard, and he has a German accent that Clint would find cliche if he had any ability to pay attention to anything other than his soulmate. “We never thought we would find you.”

“Why’s that?” Clint asks, and when he speaks, the man in the chair lifts his chin from his chest and blinks and meets Clint’s gaze. His eyes are blue. Clint thinks his favorite color is blue now. 

“You never posted on any soul-seeking sites,” the lab coat tells him. “No message boards, nothing on any site like Reddit or Facebook or any social media. Until last week.”

Yeah. 

Fuck. 

Clint just nods. 

He’d done his best to come to terms with being alone for the rest of his life. Finding his soulmate just wasn’t in the cards for ol’ Clint Barton. But Tony had found Pepper and Rhodes and Steve had found Sam and Clint had thought, _Maybe...just once wouldn’t hurt._

And look where that got him.

He can’t look away from his soulmate. He doesn’t ever want to look at anyone else again.

“Going by how long you’ve been looking,” the scientist continues, “you must have been desperate. Willing to do anything to find your other half.”

Because he’s a dummy, he nods. 

He’s always been the romantic type, after all. He knows that deep down, he’s the kind of guy who would go to hell and back if his soulmate asked. He’s just that type, and they, whoever they are, seem to know it. 

“Meet the Fist of HYDRA,” the scientist tells him. “Your soulmate.”

Clint blinks a few times. Well then. 

He does his damnedest to bite out the throats of the two guys holding him down before they knock him out.

* * *

Clint blinks awake on a cold metal table. For a moment, the world is blessedly quiet, and then he stiffens, trying to turn his head to see if anyone is around him, trying to get his bearings, but they strapped his head down as well, and there’s nothing other than bright white light and cold metal walls in his periphery, no matter how hard he strains. 

The restraints keeping him tied down were clearly built for someone far stronger than him, but Clint struggles against them anyway. He’s worn himself into an exhausted tremble by the time there’s a slight motion at his side and then there’s a piece of paper in front of his face. 

WE ARE GOING TO INSERT YOUR HEARING AIDS NOW

Well, that was more courtesy than he ever expected of HYDRA. Cold, gloved fingers deftly insert his aids and hook them over his ears and turn them on, and as Clint is trying to get his bearings with the various sounds in the room, the restraint over his forehead retracts. 

They keep out of biting range, Clint notes. Guess they learn quick. 

“If you promise not to try and kill me,” a faintly amused female voice comes from his left and Clint whips his head around to look at her, “I’ll let you sit up.”

“Where am I?” Clint asks instead of giving her an answer. He knows that they know that he’s stuck. His instinct to fight is already being overpowered by the even more base instinct to find his soulmate. “Where is he?”

“In time,” she tells him, and she hits a button on the side of the table, the restraints around his arms and torso and stomach retracting. He sits up and realizes he’s only wearing a pair of briefs. He doesn’t own briefs—he’s a boxer or a boxer briefs kinda guy—so these folks undressed him completely and then put him in different underwear. Which, well, alright. Usually folks ask before looking at his dick, that’s all. Guess he should get used to it. “I have some questions for you,” she says, and picks up a clipboard and a pen. 

She leans against a countertop about ten feet away from the table Clint is sitting on and he looks around to see that he’s in some kind of weird creepy surgical suite. The table he’s on is definitely a surgical table. Or he thinks so, anyway. Hopefully it’s not a coroner’s table.

“Ask away,” Clint replies, because, hell, might as well enjoy himself. 

She gives him an amused look then begins the questionnaire.

“Full name?”

“Clinton Francis Barton.”

“Date of birth?”

“June 18th, 1982.”

“Gender?”

“Uh, male?”

“Sexuality?”

“Bisexual.”

“Race?”

“Lady, how do you guys already not know all this?”

“Race?” she repeats, with that same mildly amused tone. One of the guards posted near her shifts his weight, like he’s just looking for an excuse to punch Clint’s daylights out again. 

He sighs. “White.”

“Place of birth?”

“Waverly, Iowa.”

The questions go on and on, detailing what he knows about his parents—not much—and what he’ll tell them about his childhood—also not much—and eventually, after Clint has talked so much that his voice cracks and he drains the two cups of water they bring him, they finally get to his soulmate. 

“Soulmark?”

“Two, actually. One is a big middle finger right on my ass.”

The guard posted up near the scientist comes over and punches him so hard that Clint is pretty sure his dad felt it in his grave. 

The scientist gives him a flat, bored look and taps a button. Two restraints come out of the table and one of the guards pushes him back down so that the restraints close over his chest. 

“Stomach,” Clint tells her, “a snowflake. The other is my left shoulder. Five pointed star.”

He decides to stop talking after that. They can punch him all they want, and they do, and they even take out his hearing aids so he can’t hear them coming, but he won’t talk about his soulmate. Not with them.

* * *

The next guy he meets is a suit. Well, there’s a few guys, but Clint can tell that the guy in the suit is the head honcho. They put him in a chair this time and tied him down but left his arms free. At least he’s dressed this time. He’s working his stiff jaw over when the door opens and the suit and the guards walk in. 

The suit sits down and looks at him. Clint sticks a few fingers in his mouth to see if they knocked any teeth loose. They worked him over good but didn’t break anything, which means they were probably told not to as a threat and to show him how much further they can go. He wipes his spit on his leg and picks dried blood off his arm. 

“You know why you’re here,” the suit says, and he speaks in a way that tells Clint he’s a man used to being listened to. 

“Sure I do,” Clint replies. 

“Your soulmate is a very valuable Asset,” the suit explains, and he puts an emphasis on _asset_ like it’s something more than just a word. It catches Clint’s attention and he looks at the guy, narrows his eyes at him. “We intend to use you to further his progress in our interests.”

“So you want us to bond and then use me against him,” Clint replies, and the suit smiles at him.

“Something like that,” he agrees, “but you’re also going to be working for us.”

Clint sits up straight. Oh, things just got interesting.

* * *

The deal is simple: he gives his loyalty to HYDRA, works to further their interests and goes on missions for them, and they give him his soulmate. Not to keep, just for long enough to do whatever they ask to have him back. 

He’s already greedy and desperate, and they’re either going to kill him or he’s going to agree, and so he agrees. 

Clint Barton, HYDRA operative. 

He meets his soulmate that afternoon. They escort him to a cell, and he takes note of the two cameras inside and one outside, and the small bed with a tiny nightstand, and then he doesn’t notice anything else, because his soulmate is sitting on that tiny bed, hands on his thighs, staring straight ahead, and they open the cell door and Clint walks inside. 

He hears it lock shut behind him and he knows there’s no going back. 

His soulmate looks up at him and Clint smiles at him, a bit shaky, and then his soulmate blinks at him and goes back to staring at the wall.

“Hi. I’m Clint,” he says, and goes to sit down at the small rickety chair at the end of the bed. “I’m your soulmate.”

Soulmate gets a reaction. The man frowns briefly and then turns to look at him. The way he moves is strange, almost like he’s in a body that’s unfamiliar to him, like he doesn’t care what happens to it. His entire left arm is metal and Clint watches as his metal hand curls into a fist, whirring and plates shifting and he wants to know what it feels like, but he restrains himself. “You’re mine,” his soulmate tells him, like he just remembered something from very long ago, and his voice is so lovely and Clint is half in love with him already. 

“That’s right,” Clint agrees, and he thinks he would’ve given HYDRA a lot more than just his loyalty for this. “I’m yours.”

“Soulmate,” his soulmate repeats, with another small frown, and then he goes back to staring at the wall.

Clint glances up at one of the cameras, not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do. “We’re supposed to touch, you know,” he tells his soulmate. “To make sure it’s real.”

His soulmate nods but doesn’t move. 

Clint takes in a deep, shaky breath and pushes to his feet. He wavers for a moment and then takes the couple steps to his soulmate's right side and sits down next to him, hip to hip, reveling for a moment in the body heat radiating off him. 

His soulmate rolls his hand over onto Clint’s thigh, palm up. 

Clint carefully reaches out and takes his hand, slotting their fingers together. For a moment, nothing happens, and then the blood in his veins is replaced by fire and he gasps as both of his soulmarks heat up and he squeezes his eyes shut and it feels like he just came home after a long, long time away. 

Whoever his soulmate is, whatever his name is, Clint will do whatever they want. He already knows he’ll do anything for him. Whatever HYDRA wants from him, they’ll get.

* * *

He meets the suit again a few days later. He walks up as Clint is slumped against the cell door, eyes intent on the hallway his soulmate disappeared down that morning. Clint thinks the suit—he learns his name is Pierce—is supposed to be treated with respect or he’s supposed to be deferential, but they don’t know much about Clint Barton if that’s what they expect from him. 

“Your first mission will be tonight,” Pierce tells him, sitting down on a chair one of his guards brings for him. “I don’t have the details, but I know mission success is imperative to HYDRA’s goals.”

Clint sits up and finally drags his eyes away from where he’d last seen his soulmate, looks up at Pierce. “What do I have to do?” he asks, instead of any of the dozen other questions running through his mind.

A SHIELD agent walks down the hall. Clint doesn’t know very many SHIELD agents, but he recognizes a few of them. The Avengers work with them on occasion, and Clint has been drafted to do a few missions for them when the Avengers are on break. He doesn’t know this agent’s name, but he’s seen him before. 

A SHIELD agent in HYDRA? Or a HYDRA agent in SHIELD?

“Barton,” the agent greets with a slick smile. “Welcome to the other side.”

“Howdy,” Clint replies tiredly. Pierce stands up and says something quietly enough that his aids don’t pick it up. The agent nods, gives Clint a sly look.

Pierce looks back at him, looks him over like he is looking at a somewhat dangerous pet animal. Clint wonders how they’re going to declaw him. “We have ways of making you comply,” Pierce finally tells him. “Willing compliance will be far better for you in the long run.”

He nods at Clint, gives the agent an approving look, and leaves, his guards filtering behind him. 

It leaves Clint alone with a few guards and the SHIELD agent. He leans his cheek on the bars and looks up at him. He understands how people die when their soulmate dies or leaves them. It feels like all of his blood has been replaced with sludge. He’s exhausted. 

But he pushes to his feet anyway, meets the SHIELD agent eye-to-eye. The agent opens the folder he’s carrying, makes sure to remove any staples or paper clips, and then hands a few pieces of paper through the cell door. 

Clint takes it, glances it over. 

“This is what you want me for?” he asks. “This?”

“Even Avengers must take out the trash,” the agent tells him with a small, smug smile. Clint wants to bash his fucking face in. 

“It’s not that,” Clint mutters. “This is just something I figured they’d use you for.” The smile falls off the agent’s face and he curls his free hand into a shaking fist. Clint smirks at him. “This is somethin’ I can do in my sleep.”

Hell, if all his missions are this easy, maybe working for HYDRA won’t be so bad.

Famous last words and all.

* * *

The mission goes smooth as butter. Only hitch in the plan is that they have him using his bow and arrows, not a rifle, but that’s easy enough. He already assumes the Avengers know he’s missing, and HYDRA clearly wants them to know that Hawkeye has defected over to their side. So he doesn’t collect any arrows once he’s done—they tell him he doesn’t need to—and after he’s killed the high-ranking SHIELD agent inside the safe house with an arrow in between the eyes, Clint slings his bow over his shoulder and strolls out. 

He pulls off his gloves once he’s back in the car they have waiting for him, and the HYDRA agent in the front seat turns to look at him. 

“Mission report,” the agent says.

“Successful,” Clint replies with a raised eyebrow. “I killed all the guards and then the SHIELD agent inside. Told y’all it would be easy.”

To his surprise, the agent reaches across the seats and slaps him. Clint catches his hand and cracks one of his fingers. 

“You’re not going to treat me like that,” he tells the wide-eyed agent. “Whatever they told you the deal was, I don’t care. But nobody hits me.”

He breaks another finger before letting the agent’s hand go. The agent in the driver’s seat rolls his eyes and hits a button that locks all the doors and windows and then rolls up a partition between them. 

Once he’s out of sight, Clint pulls out his hearing aids and rubs at his ears, then kicks his feet up and closes his eyes. The ride back to HYDRA’s underground headquarters is long and they leave him the fuck alone. 

They drag him out of the car once they arrive back, and Clint goes along with it, doesn’t try to walk, just becomes dead weight in their arms. Hopefully one of them picked up his hearing aids.

They take him to a room far underground. The air tastes different. His soulmate is in there, tied down to some strange huge chair, a peculiar machine behind him, and Clint surges forward, almost manages to break out of their grasp. But the guards manage to keep a hold on him.

His soulmate looks at him.

His mouth moves.

Clint has been deaf for as long as he can remember, ever since he was a kid and his dad whooped him too hard too many times. It’s just a part of him now. He was never the type to wish that his life was different. But now, for the first time in a long time, he wishes he could hear. He doesn’t hear with the hearing aids; they transfer sound into waves his brain can understand, or whatever. Tony had explained it to him a few times, but from what Clint understands, the hearing aids just make it so that he can hear some stuff.

But now he wants to hear his soulmate’s voice more than anything else in the entire fucking world.

His soulmate turns his head, like he’s listening to something, and then opens his mouth. The scientist next to him puts in a mouthguard and his soulmate settles back as a strange contraption descends over his head. Clint frowns and then recoils as he feels something surge in the room and then his soulmate begins to shake.

A scientist steps in front of him and motions to his soulmate, shaking and probably screaming in the Chair. The scientist says something but Clint can’t pay enough attention to try and read her lips. One of the guards next to him moves to readjust his grip on Clint’s arm, and he takes the second of lax security to try and break free.

Electricity courses through him and he crumples to the ground as his body shakes and trembles. He thinks he screams. It’s gone just a second later and he pants on the floor, hands shaking and flexing, and he shifts a bit uncomfortably, and it kind of feels like he pissed himself.

The scientist leans over him. “—— [teach] — [to] [answer] ———”

“I’m deaf,” he spits out through ragged breaths. “I can’t fucking hear you.”

She blinks a few times, straightens up, and Clint squeezes his eyes shut, trying to calm himself down and lower his heart rate back down. What the _fuck_ had all that been about? Jesus Christ, he did what they wanted from him and they still fucking taze him? Goddamn Nazi assholes.

Two hands grab each of his biceps and yank him to his feet. Clint begins to try to fight them off, but feels what he assumes to be the taser against his back, so he goes along with them, opens his eyes to glare at the scientist in front of him. She sheepishly holds out his hearing aids, and they release his arms to let him turn them on and stick them back in his ears.

“I said I’ll do what you want,” Clint bites out. “But if I can’t fuckin’ hear, I can’t really do it, can I?” He feels a little petulant, and because he’s an asshole, he says, “I killed the guy you guys wanted me to kill and you taze me for it?”

His soulmate is breathing heavily in the background, breathing like he’s on the verge of tears, and it takes every single bit of energy Clint has to not kill all of them and get him out of that Chair and just run until HYDRA can never find either of them again. Also he thinks his legs wouldn’t hold him for any more than a step or two.

“I apologize,” the scientist tells him, sounding anything but apologetic, but she smiles at him. She turns and motions to his soulmate. “Agent Barton, you are not to harm any of our agents. We put the Asset into the Chair as punishment for you breaking two of Agent Denham’s fingers.”

“He hit me,” Clint replies with a frown. “I agreed to go on missions for you all. I didn’t agree to be punched.” He motions to his soulmate. “I don’t know who you are, ma’am, but you clearly know who I am and know how to keep me in line. And that’s all fine. But I’m not going to let anyone hit me.”

The scientist gives him a look like she’s never met anyone with an opinion before. Clint lifts his chin, grits his teeth. They might be HYDRA but they’re not going to fucking hit him.

“Very well,” she says after having a quiet conversation with a few other scientists and a few agents. Clint can barely manage to pull his eyes away from his soulmate, who is still slumped in the Chair, eyes clouded and moving slowly around the room, sometimes glancing over Clint, but there’s no recognition in his gaze. Whatever that machine is, it messed him up bad. “Our agents will be made aware that no physical violence is to be used upon you. However, if you harm one of our agents, that restriction will be lifted.”

Clint nods. He can work with that. He just—he doesn’t want to be hit. He already said he’ll do whatever they want, they don’t need to hit him. He’s a grown fuckin’ man. He can do shit without being hit for doing it wrong.

She steps closer to him and Clint manages to drag his gaze away from his soulmate to look at her. “As a reward for successful completion of your mission, the Asset will be given to you for the night.” She turns her head, calls out something in Russian, and his soulmate lifts his head and replies. They unstrap him from the chair and lead both Clint and his soulmate out of the room and down the hall back to his cell.

There’s lube and a pack of condoms on the tiny nightstand.

Clint shifts uncomfortably as he changes out of his HYDRA uniform and into the HYDRA-branded sweats and sweatshirt they give him. His soulmate sits down on the bed and puts his hands on his thighs and alternates between staring at the wall across from him and glancing at Clint. There’s absolutely no recognition in his gaze. It’s even clearer now that whatever that Chair did to his soulmate, it really, really messed him up. 

“I’m Clint,” he says, when his soulmate looks at him again. “I’m your soulmate.”

“Soulmate,” he repeats, his lovely voice deep and gentle, and the word sounds strange on his tongue. Clint sits next to him, on his right side, and holds out his hand, palm up. His soulmate turns his head and looks at him, then down at his hand. He says something in Russian.

Clint gives a small chuckle. “I barely speak English, man, I definitely don’t know another language.” He knows what Russian sounds like from Natasha, but he can’t understand anything other than a couple swear words. “You spoke English last time. Can you do it again?”

“Soulmate,” his soulmate whispers, and takes Clint’s hand.

The same fire races through his veins and Clint tries to hold in his gasp.

For a moment, he feels _something_, almost like a presence at the back of his mind. There’s just a little _tick_ back there, a faint awareness, and then it’s gone. Clint has heard of telepathic soulmate bonds before. They’re rare, unthinkably rare, and God, he hopes he has one. Maybe then he can figure out just what the fuck is going on here.

He scoots back on the small bed, drags his soulmate with him, and leans back against the wall. His soulmate sits next to him, stiff as a board, and Clint sags against him, closes his eyes.

His soulmate holds onto him with a death grip. He’s strong, nearly as strong as Steve.

Clint gets an impression as he’s falling asleep, a feeling that kind of swims through him that moves in a way that doesn’t feel like his own emotions. But he gets an impression that his soulmate doesn’t know anything, doesn’t even know his own name.

Clint falls asleep with the knowledge that he will do anything, literally anything at all, to keep his soulmate safe.

He wakes up as someone gently lays him down, a warm body bracketing his own. He murmurs something as his hearing aids are carefully pulled out, and a cold metal hand slides across his stomach. Clint catches it in his hand, slots their fingers together, and falls back asleep.

* * *

His next mission is with his soulmate. They’d trained a few times together and Clint had never worked so well with someone. His fighting style is pretty universal—hit them with arrows or punch them until they stop moving or turn everything around him into a weapon until they stop moving—but his soulmate slots into him like they were two counterparts made for each other. Which, well, yeah.

Their mission is to clear a warehouse. Clint has been to this warehouse before; it’s a SHIELD stronghold. They keep a lot of recovered weapons in the armored room in the basement, as well as classified files and all sorts of information stored on the computers. Clint assumes he was chosen for this before he’s been there, but he doesn’t ask. He’s too intent on watching his soulmate suit up. Everything he does is purposeful, not a single movement wasted. A few agents bring both of them their mission clothes, which consist of heavy tactical pants, bulletproof vests, and a thick-long sleeved shirt that feels reinforced with some kind of fabric that Clint assumes is stab-proof. They’re both given boots and his soulmate paints his eyes black and pulls on a muzzle and a pair of goggles. Clint doesn’t ask for his own, although HYDRA probably wants to muzzle him. But he knows that they want people talking about how Hawkeye is a HYDRA agent now, so he doesn’t get anything to cover his face.

His soulmate gets more weapons than Clint has ever seen on one person in his entire life. Even Nat doesn’t have that many knives on her. Clint is actually a bit impressed. He gets an extremely nice bow, a bunch of fancy arrows, an expensive, custom quiver, and a few knives and a handgun of his own. 

He watches his soulmate get dressed and wishes he knew his name.

The mission goes well enough. One of the agents accompanying them gets a broken arm, and Clint gets a few cuts on his back, but no loss of life other than the SHIELD agents. It feels kind of shitty—okay _really_ shitty—to be killing SHIELD agents, but whenever Clint feels bad about it, he sees his soulmate and the knowledge that he’d do absolutely anything for this man, including killing allies, and he suddenly doesn’t feel so bad. Whoever his soulmate is, he has Clint Barton in his corner, and Clint is as loyal and steadfast as the day is long.

Because they did so well, Clint and his soulmate get two days in the cell, completely alone, not bothered at all by any agents or scientists or anyone. The cameras stay on, of course, but Clint doesn’t pay them any mind. All he cares about is the fact that he gets to take a damp cloth and carefully wipe the black paint from his soulmate’s face and gets to cradle his jaw and run a brush through his hair and clean blood off his metal arm and the longer he’s away from HYDRA agents, the clearer his soulmate’s eyes get. Whatever that Chair is, it does something to his soulmate’s brain. Clint hates it more than he’s ever hated anything in his life.

Clint sits on the floor in front of the bed and leans back against his soulmate’s legs. He knows it’s going to get harder, a lot harder. The last two missions have been too easy. But, for right now, his soulmate is sitting behind him, petting Clint’s hair with the tips of his metal fingers, and all is right in the world.

He isn’t putting any hope in Steve or Tony or Natasha or Thor or any of them to come rescue him. Whoever his soulmate is, HYDRA has had him for a long, long time. If none of the Avengers even _knew_ about him, there’s no way they’d find Clint. All Clint can ask for is that they know he’s missing and that they’re, at the very least, looking for him. They won’t find him—all they’ll find is what HYDRA wants them to find—but at least they’re looking. At least, Clint hopes.

* * *

* * *

Life isn’t easy under HYDRA. He spends most of his time in his cell, alone. He doesn’t know what they do with his soulmate when they’re not together, but Clint doesn’t think it’s anything good. His soulmate forgets him every time they take him away, and sometimes, if Clint has his hearing aids in, he hears him screaming. So he starts taking his aids out. He feels a bit cowardly doing it but he can’t _do_ anything to help, and he can’t keep breaking fingers trying to break out of the cell, so he takes his hearing aids out.

He sits in silence and waits.

Sometimes Pierce comes to visit him. Sometimes a scientist comes—always a different one, HYDRA must go through scientists like...well, it seems like they go through a lot of them—and sometimes an agent comes. They always want something from him: mission report, some information about SHIELD or some agents or even, a few times, about the other Avengers. They always want information. Clint gives what he can, but only after he’s sure his soulmate is okay.

He learns where they take him when he’s not with Clint.

Cryo.

They _freeze_ him.

It pisses Clint off so much that they have to sedate him. He bloodies his hands trying to break his soulmate out.

After that, they only bring his soulmate to him. He only leaves the cell for missions. He’s too dangerous to be let out, he figures. No more escape attempts because he doesn’t know where he is in the compound and no more escape attempts because he doesn’t know where his soulmate is and no more escape attempts because if he tries to run, they’ll put his soulmate in the Chair and force him to listen. There’s been a few times where a few agents grab him and force his aids into his ears and pin him down while his soulmate shrieks in pain down the hall. Clint learned quick to behave after that.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. A few months is his best bet. They send him on missions, sometimes just recon, sometimes killing someone, sometimes killing a lot of someones. His soulmate goes with him a few times, but they seem to think he works better alone, or maybe he’s less of a risk for escaping if his soulmate isn’t with him. Clint doesn’t know. He doesn’t really care. All he does is whatever they tell him to so he can sit in the dark in his shitty cell and hold hands with his soulmate.

He misses everyone else. Hell, he even misses Tony. He misses Thor and his weird brother, Loki. He misses Kate and Steve and Natasha and Bruce and Sam and Pepper and T’Challa and Scott and Hope and all of them. He hopes they’re looking for him. It would really suck if no one cared.

He thinks they have to be, right? An Avenger goes missing, they have to at least check his apartment and his floor of the Tower and his haunts, right? He knows he’s not much compared to the rest of them, but he’s always done his best by them.

They take his soulmate on missions sometimes. Clint knows because they always make a point to walk him by Clint’s cell and point at him and say something that sounds mean in Russian and his soulmate looks at him and nods. He can’t imagine how they’re using _him_ as leverage for anything, but it must be working, since when his soulmate returns, he slides into bed next to Clint and wraps both arms around his shoulders and holds him close.

Sometimes, his soulmate will show up for only an hour or so. Clint just assumes its an hour; he has no real concept of the passing of time anymore. But he knows it’s short, just long enough for Clint to tell his soulmate his name and take his hand and for them to just sit in silence. Then guards come and spit something out in Russian and his soulmate nods and detangles their hands and stands and leaves.

They begin to truly test his loyalty. Pierce goes to some black tie party, wants a hot piece of ass hanging off his arm, and so they dye Clint’s hair, give him colored contacts, put a fake tattoo on his neck, put him in a suit that probably costs more than Clint’s ever earned in his life, and he hangs off Pierce’s arm and laughs at his shitty jokes and flirts with all the older men and unbuttons his shirt so they can run their hands over his abs and the snowflake on his stomach and at the end of it, Pierce gives him an approving look and he gets his soulmate for what feels like a whole week. It's probably just a few days, but Clint gets to wake up in his arms at least three times, and he’ll do anything to keep that.

They end up moving him. He gets a bigger cell in another compound, and this one has a bigger bed and a sink and a toilet that doesn’t make strange noises whenever he flushes it. Hell, it even has a couch. There’s a cryo machine in the corner closest to the bed, and Clint wakes up one morning to find that they’ve put his soulmate inside of it.

It’s worse, almost, to be able to see him and not talk to him, not touch him.

His soulmate sleeps on as the days pass. He goes on smaller missions where there’s no other agents, no guards, where it’s just him and his bow and arrows, stealing something important or not important—sometimes it’s documents, sometimes it’s diamonds or jewels, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes he doesn’t even care what it is, he just gets in, gets out, and gets his soulmate at the end of it—and then they start to let him out in the world. They let him go to the bookstore, for one, and three guards follow him around as he buys enough books to keep him occupied for a year.

If he’s done well, they let his soulmate out. If he’s done _really_ well, they don’t put him in the Chair after they take him out. If he messes up, which he’s only done once when he got hit over the head and his hearing aid broke and he shot a HYDRA agent in the side, they drag him down the hall and restrain him to a chair across from the Chair and make him watch. Then they put his soulmate into another cryo chamber and Clint doesn’t seem him for three more missions and he’s alone in his room and every day he feels like he’s going to fucking _die._

Then they bring his soulmate back and Clint promises that he’ll never mess up again, he’ll never hurt someone on their side again, he just—he _needs_ him. They can’t take him away, they _can’t._

Pierce comes by later, when Clint is sitting in front of the cryo chamber, looking up at his soulmate’s slack, sleeping face through the glass, and Clint scrambles to his feet as Pierce pulls over a chair.

“Clint,” Pierce says, “you’ve been allowed a lot of privileges.”

“I know,” Clint replies. “Sir, I swear I didn’t mean to—”

Pierce holds up a hand. “I know. You’ve earned those privileges. What you’ve done for us…” He shakes his head. “We never thought we’d get this far. Your abilities far surpassed anything we believed possible.” He gives Clint a considering look. “You know what the Chair does?”

“Erases memories, I think,” Clint says cautiously, and Pierce nods.

“I’m willing to stop using it on him,” Pierce tells him, and motions to Clint’s soulmate. “If you do one last thing for me.”

“Anything,” Clint replies, and he knows Pierce is lying, he _knows_ it, but he can’t take the chance he’s not. He can’t keep listening and watching as his soulmate is erased and hurt and harmed time and time again. He’ll do anything.

Pierce smiles at him and pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. It’s a photo. Clint looks down at it. “I need you to kill him,” Pierce tells him.

Clint looks between the photo and his soulmate in the cryo machine.

He nods.

* * *

HYDRA made him small hearing aids that are hidden inside his ear canal. They sound a little different than the old ones, and Clint preferred those, but he does as he’s told. He slides them in and pulls on his uniform and buckles up his boots and slides his quiver over his back and grabs his bow and then stands in front of the cryo machine.

“I’ll be back,” he promises his sleeping soulmate. He actually doesn’t know a lot about cryo, he just assumes he’s sleeping. Hopefully he’s not dead in there, or in a coma, or however else it could work. “Don’t go anywhere without me.”

Alright. He can do this. He can kill Captain America.

He meets a few HYDRA agents outside his room and they escort him to the waiting van outside the compound. They sit for a few minutes and then another van pulls up. A few more agents pile inside it, and Clint is checking out his arrows for any bending or loose fletching as they pull away. Mission report had indicated that Steve and Sam would be leaving the Tower later that afternoon. Clint was to post up on top of a building and wait for them, and put an arrow between Captain America’s eyes the second he saw him.

Should be easy enough. He’s not sure why his hands are shaking, but they are.

The HYDRA agents escort him to the top of the building, make sure he’s situated, and then leave him. A few minutes later, a few of them return, and behind them is Clint’s soulmate. His breath catches in his throat and he shifts uncomfortably as his soulmate nods to him and then sets up camp on the far corner, pulling out a rifle and settling down to wait.

He can barely pay attention to the mission as he glances between the door Steve is supposed to leave out of and his soulmate. They haven’t been on a mission together in _months_. He almost forgot how good his soulmate looks with a rifle in his hands.

Clint wonders what his soulmate thinks of him, if he wants to kiss Clint as much as Clint wants to kiss him, if he knows something is missing even when they fuck with his mind.

He tries to put the thought out of his mind and checks his watch, settling back down to watch the door. It should only be another hour or so—

There is a small sound and then the feeling of a gun barrel pressing into the back of his head. Clint freezes.

“HYDRA really fell for this, huh,” comes a familiar voice, and Clint turns to see Natasha at the other end of the handgun. Behind her is Steve Rogers, walking over to probably kill Clint.

He doesn’t care if they kill him. After all he’s done for HYDRA, he probably deserves it. But he looks across the rooftop to see his soulmate, also with a gun to his head, hands in the air.

Natasha won’t shoot him. If Clint knows anything about her, he knows that. So he pushes carefully to his feet. “I had to,” he tells them, tells her. “They didn’t give me any choice.”

His soulmate stands up as well, metal arm glinting in the sunlight. Clint wants nothing more than to go over to him and take a bullet for him, but as he considers it, Iron Man lands on the rooftop.

Before anything else happens, Steve says, “Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” his soulmate asks, and pulls a knife from his waist. He leaps forward and Clint surges forward to knock Natasha off balance and manages to get her handgun from her and then he and his soulmate are standing next to each other against the Avengers.

Iron Man raises an arm and hits them both with a repulsor blast.

The world goes dark.

* * *

Clint is already out of bed before he’s really aware he’s conscious at all. His soulmate is nowhere to be seen, he’s in a secure cell, and he’s _alone_. If he’d been captured, they were going to kill his soulmate. They’d made that promise more than once, and Clint believed them.

The door is locked and made out of steel with a small, plexiglass window. The hall outside his cell is empty, and there’s no window or anything else that he could maybe escape out of. If this is SHIELD or the Avengers, they’re not treating him any better than HYDRA.

He wants to fucking scream.

So he does.

He can’t hear it but he puts all his goddamn breath into it, and he screams until he can’t breathe and he can feel his face is red and his chest hurts. Then he screams some more.

They were going to be _done_. Do this one last thing and his soulmate would never have to go back in that Chair—he knows Pierce was lying but now there’s no way to prove that they wouldn’t have been done—and they would’ve been done. Maybe Clint could’ve learned his soulmate’s fucking _name_ before HYDRA had killed them both. But now...now he’ll never see him again.

He screams until he spits up blood and then he pulls all his blankets off his bed and curls up in a ball on the floor.

He’d done everything HYDRA wanted. He’d never fought after they promised to never hit him again, and they _hadn’t_. Shouldn’t he get something out of all of it? Shouldn’t SHIELD be better?

He wants to cry out of the sheer hopelessness of all of it. 

They slide a meal try in through the slot in the bottom of the door twice a day, bring him toilet paper and new clothes when he needs it, and they don’t give him any information or even give him his hearing aids back. He counts the meals and goes through twenty of them by the time the door opens for the first time.

Captain America walks in.

Clint attacks him.

Steve stops him easily, holds him off, and pins him to the wall with one arm. He pats in one of his pockets with his free hand and pulls out his hearing aids. He holds them up and gives Clint a look that Clint takes to mean: _If you stop trying to kill me, you can have your hearing back._

Clint slumps back and nods. He takes the hearing aids—they’re Stark tech, lightweight and obnoxiously purple—and hooks them over his ears and slides them in.

“Steve,” he greets after the shock of the sound wears off. “Where is he?”

“He’s safe,” Steve tells him and Clint would’ve fallen to the floor in relief if Steve hadn’t kept his arm across his chest. “You going to try to kill me again?” Steve asks, a bit teasingly.

“If you hurt him, I really will kill you,” Clint swears, and strangely enough, Steve looks like he believes him. “Where is he?”

“Down the hall,” Steve replies, and Clint freezes. Had his soulmate been able to hear him screaming? He never would’ve—he wouldn’t have—he didn’t know. “Come on, Hawk. We’re going to put you two together.”

Clint can’t seem to make his feet move. Doubt suddenly swarms him. He doesn’t even know his soulmate’s _name_. He’s known him for months or even years and has never asked. He’d even tried to stop getting away from HYDRA. He hadn’t even...what kind of soulmate is he? He’d done unspeakable things and his soulmate had still been hurt. What kind of man is he? What kind of soulmate lives with his soulmate in a cryogenic chamber for _months?_

“Steve,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t even know his _name._”

“He doesn’t know yours either,” Steve says softly, and he pulls Clint forward. “His name is Bucky. Well, James. He was my friend.”

James.

That’s a good name.

Clint could get used to that name.

He still can’t—

“Cap, I was a HYDRA agent,” he tells Steve, almost desperately. He can’t just—there has to be some kind of punishment for this.

“We know,” Steve says simply. He sighs. “We’ve known for awhile now. You were taken prisoner by HYDRA almost eighteen months ago, Clint.”

A year and a half. Jesus.

He sits down on his bed.

“There might be an investigation,” Steve continues, “but nothing that will affect you or Bucky. James, I mean. Everything you two went through, what HYDRA put the two of you through…” He trails off, shakes his head. “Him especially. We found out that HYDRA has been operating within SHIELD for decades, and they’ve had James as their Asset for about seventy years. They’ve planned on finding his soulmate ever since they kidnapped him.”

His soulmate must hate him, Clint realizes. James won’t be able to look at him and see anything other than HYDRA using them against each other. How can he go see him when he knows that his soulmate will want nothing to do with him?

“He’s been asking about you, when he remembers your name. His memory is shot, and our doctors are trying to figure out if it’s permanent or not. But he knows he has a soulmate.” Steve smiles at him. “The first thing he asked is where you are.”

Clint nods and Steve pulls him to his feet.

“Bucky was my best friend,” Steve tells him, a far-off look in his eye. “What HYDRA did to you two is monstrous. It’s horrible. Using soulmates against each other is beyond disgusting. Did you know it’s a crime now? We found records of everyone involved with keeping you two apart and manipulating your bond and they’re all being charged.” Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. Clint looks up at him. “We found you, Clint. I know it took us too long, and I know it should’ve been sooner, but we found you. You’re safe.”

Clint crumples and Steve pulls him in for a hug.

He doesn’t sob into Steve’s chest like he feels like he should, but he manages to calm himself down enough that his shoulders aren’t shaking and his heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to beat out of his chest.

“What’s it like?” he asks Steve as he pulls away, rubs at the back of his neck.

Steve smiles at him. “It’s like coming home,” he replies.

“What’s his mark?”

“An arrow right below his belly button.”

Same spot as his snowflake.

Clint nods and Steve leads the way down the hall, past various doors and down to one at the end. Steve pulls it open and Clint walks inside, takes in the comfortable furniture and the door to the bedroom and there are _windows._

His soulmate sits on the couch, blanket wrapped around his legs, and there’s a book in his lap. He looks up at them, pushes his long hair off his face with his metal hand. He’s the most beautiful person Clint has ever seen.

His soulmate smiles.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m James. I’m your soulmate.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave comments and kudos!!
> 
> follow me:  
tumblr: @deluxemycroft  
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